Ronnie Screwvala: The five charges I have brought about are very serious and need a final solution even if that means a face-off

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Ronnie Screwvala: The five charges I have brought about are very serious and need a final solution even if that means a face-off

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Rachana Dubey

Created: Mar 26, 2019, 08:19 IST

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BT reached out to Ronnie Screwvala for his side of the story. He said, “Firstly, I want to clarify that five serious matters will be under investigation with the CCI and are sub judice. So, I will not want to comment on them.” However, the producer answered our specific questions, from a personal point of view.

There are many large studios and producers doing many more movies than you. You have gone on record to say RSVP is a passion project and hobby, so why have you done this on your own?It’s about right and wrong. It’s about the theatre owners acting in collusion and the content industry is unfortunately not united. So, I had no choice but to act on my own rather than seek any form of consensus. Directors sell to producers, producers sell to financiers or studios and studios use sub-distributors. So, the accountability on these levied by theatres is just not understood. For me, it was the only way. And secondly, as a hobby, I have nothing to lose. I have learnt as an entrepreneur that the formidable opponent you can have is someone who has nothing to lose.

Normally, people file complaints before the CCI anonymously. Why did you decide to front it?The five charges I have brought about are very serious and need a final solution, even if that means a face-off. The matter is now sub judice and so, I cannot comment more on it. But it would be a cop-out to not take full accountability for what you think needs to change.

Inox banned your movie because you fronted the CCI complaint. Do you feel victimised?It’s all too petty. Inox has shown their high-handedness and I have nothing to comment on that. However, look at the double standard of an Inox — they will ban one of our new movies, but continue to run our URI in their theatres? Why? Because they are very clear that the movie has made them a ton of money and made their Quarter 4 look good, so they will not mess with it. Same way, they will not mess with Hollywood studios and continue with their discriminatory behaviour, which is at the core of my complaint.

What’s the financial impact for content creators and theatre owners?For theatre owners, it’s clearly a reversal of a free lunch they have been enjoying for many years when it comes to VPF. It’s also a call to ban advertising in theatres, as it’s anti-consumer. The consumer has paid a ticket price to watch a movie and he/she is being subjected to a massive 15 minutes or more of advertising thereby driving him/her away from coming to the theatre. This has to stop . And for me, the theatre owner is a service provider — who would have nothing to show if the content creators did not take the primary risk to make movies and give it to them to run for a limited period and for a revenue share, which again needs to be corrected to a more equal footing. For content creators, they can save Rs 2 crore to Rs 8 crore per movie release — last week, Kesari released with 4,000 prints and so, at Rs 20, 000 per print, that is a massive Rs 8 crore that Zee Studios would have saved on one movie. You can do the maths on what that would mean for the year. Also, no advertisements would mean shorter viewing experience for audiences and so more footfalls plus shorter intervals would mean more shows, too. If there is a balanced and long-term view taken by both sides, there is a win-win, but the content sector cannot suffer and pay for the growth of theatre owners when they are the higher risk takers in the value chain, creating the content in the first place. I hope better sense will prevail over high-handed approach to all issues.

So, you see the content creators coming out to support you ?I don’t know. What I do know is, they all have more to lose than I do personally. For me, all eyes are on Disney — they have always been clear there is no VPF to be paid and they did not pay on Dangal. And so, in the new avatar of all movies from Fox/Star inside the Disney umbrella, they would also not be allowed to pay any VPF. And that will be the beginning of the end of VPF . So let’s see what Disney does.

So, are you committed to see this through even with low support from your fellow content creators ?The writing is on the wall. The charges are serious and costly on both sides. This is a face-off that needs to be settled properly. I do want to add that I did make efforts to talk to the owners and management of the theatre owners, but got no coherent answer other than to say that they needed to hold on to their VPF fees and their high advertising due to their need to build more screens. Not one of them replied to my query as to why in India, Hollywood movies were given favourable treatment against Marathi, Hindi and regional language cinema. It’s totally anti-Indian and anti-consumer.

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